J. Elliot Ross is a member of an old and prominent Southern family. He has long been an ardent student of economics, of sociology, and of the enslaved condition of the Wage-Earner,—and who, save the idle rich and the social drone, is not a wage-earner? Dr. Ross is a graduate of George Washington University. The Catholic University of America conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy for this, his excellent work in behalf of the Consumer, the Wage-Earner, and the Oppressed.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

CHAPTER I
The Point at Issue[3]

CHAPTER II
Obligations of the Consuming Class[8]

CHAPTER III
What is a Just Employer?[38]

CHAPTER IV
Theory of Industrial Organization[47]

CHAPTER V
Industrial Conditions: Wages[66]

CHAPTER VI
Industrial Conditions: Health[77]

CHAPTER VII
Industrial Conditions: Morals[95]

CHAPTER VIII
What Should the Individual Consumer Do? [107]

Appendix		[133]

Bibliography		[135]

[CHAPTER ONE]

THE POINT AT ISSUE

Have you ever stood in a country store and from the superior heights of mature wisdom watched a chubby-faced, bright-eyed boy invest a penny in a prize-bag? To you it is simply a paper enclosing a few nuts, a piece of candy, and a variable quantity in the shape of a tin flag, an imitation ring, etc. But to the child there is an excitement in getting one knows not what. All the gambling instincts of the race that squanders thousands upon the turf, all the love of adventure that peopled our continent, are summed up in that one act. The child has, perhaps, contentedly endured the routine of the farm for weeks in the anticipation of this one moment of blissful joy when his anxious fingers nervously reveal the delight or the disappointment.